The quilis, formerly in exclusive use, and still largely employed among Western communities as writing instruments, are obtained principally from the wings of the goose. Swan-quills are also highly prized, and for special purposes crow-quills and the wing-feathers of certain other birds are adopted. For the method of preparing quills, &c., see Feathers, vol. ix. p. 60. In 1809 Joseph Bramah, the famous inventor, devised and patented a machine for cutting up the quill into separate nibs by dividing the barrel into three or even four parts, and cutting these transversely into “two, three, four, and some into five lengths.” Bramah’s invention first familiarized the public with the appearance and use of the nib and holder in place of the complete quill or barrel, and in that sense he anticipated the form of pen now most commonly used. In 1818 Charles Watt obtained a patent for gilding and preparing quills and pens by manual labour and chemical means, which may be regarded as the precursor of the gold pen. But a more distinct advance in this direction was effected in 1822, when Hawkins and Mordan patented the application of horn and tortoise-shell to the formation of pen-nibs, the points of which were rendered durable by impressing into them small pieces of diamond, ruby, or other very hard substance, or by lapping a small piece of thin sheet gold over the end of the tortoise-shell, and by various other ways securing a hard unalterable point to the pen.

Metallic pens, though perhaps not altogether unknown even in classical times, did not come into use till the present century, and indeed did not become common till near the middle of the century. At the meeting of the British Association in Birmingham in 1839 steel pens were scarcely known; ten years later the manufacture had become an important local industry. In 1803 a steel pen was made and sold in London by a Mr Wise, which was in the form of a tube or barrel pen, the edges meeting to form the slit with sides cut away as in the case of an ordinary quill. These sold at about five shillings each, and as they were hard, stiff, and unsatisfactory instruments they were not in great demand. In 1808 a metallic pen was patented by Bryan Donkin, made of two separate parts, flat or nearly so, with the flat sides opposite each other forming the slit of the pen, or, as an alternative, of one piece, flat and not cylindrical as in the usual form, bent to the proper angle before being inserted into the tube which forms its holder. In Birmingham a steel pen was made by a splitring manufacturer, Harrison, for Dr Priestley towards the end of the 18th century. Harrison in after years became associated in the split-ring business with Josiah Mason, who was one of the great pioneers of the steel-pen trade. Mason developed the manufacture on the basis of an invention by James Perry, who in 1830 obtained a patent for improvements which must be regarded as the foundation of the steel-pen industry. Perry’s improvements consisted in producing pens from hard, thin, and elastic metal, the most suitable material being described as the very best steel brought to a spring temper. The necessary flexibility was given to the pen by a central hole formed in the pen between the nib and the shoulder in connexion with a central slit, and by making between the nib and the shoulder one or more lateral slits on each side of the central slit. Joseph Gillott, who divides with Mason and Perry the credit of perfecting the metallic pen, does not appear as a patentee till 1831, when he patented an improvement which consisted in forming elongated points on the nibs of pens. These early pens lacked softness, flexibility, and smoothness of action, and subsequent inventions of Perry, Gillott, Mordan, and others were largely devoted to overcoming such defects. Metals other than steel were also frequently suggested by inventors, those most commonly proposed being silver, zinc, German silver, aluminium, and aluminium bronze, the last-named having at one time come into extensive use. The development of the gold pen cannot be traced through the patent records in the same way as some others. Dr Wollaston, it is recorded, used a gold pen composed of two thin slips of gold tipped with rhodium, made apparently on the principle patented by Donkin in 1808. Messrs Mordan of London have the credit of being the earliest regular makers of gold pens with tips of osmiumiridium alloy, and that manufacture was subsequently developed by Messrs Wiley of Birmingham. The gold pens now made are provided with iridium tips, and their manufacture is a special industry, requiring processes and machines different from those used in the steel-pen industry.

Fountain pens and penholders in which considerable reservoirs of ink could be carried ready for use were introduced by a patented invention of the ingenious Joseph Bramah. Of his several plans for a fountain pen one proposal was a hollow tube of silver or other metal, the tube being made so thin that it could readily be compressed out of shape and so cause an escape of ink to the nib, and another plan was to fit the tube with a piston which might slide down the interior and so force out ink. John Scheffer in 1819 patented a device consisting of a reservoir in the holder operated on by a stud, which, when pressed by the thumb, yielded a flow of ink to the nib. Many forms of attachment and modifications of the shape of the pen have also been introduced with the view of enabling the pen itself to carry a considerable supply of ink, and to discharge it in writing in a safe and equal manner. A highly original and comparatively successful form of fountain pen of recent introduction is known as the stylograph, in which the ordinary form of nib is dispensed with, and connected with the barrel or reservoir is a finely-tapered point tipped with iridium pierced with a fine aperture. Into the aperture is fitted an iridium needle or plug attached internally to a delicate gold spring, and the act of writing sufficiently pushes back the needle to allow the escape of the requisite flow of ink by the aperture. The two principal forms of stylograph are that of Mackinnon, patented first in the United States in March 1879, and that of Cross, the United States patent for which was secured in January 1878.

The finish which the common steel pen now shows, and the low price at which it can be sold, are triumphs of manufacturing skill, the credit of which is largely due to Birmingham. For the fraction of a farthing there can now be purchased an article incomparably superior to that which in the early years of the century cost five shillings. The metal used consists of rolled sheets of cast steel of the finest quality, made from Swedish charcoal iron. These sheets are cut into strips of suitable width, annealed in a muffle furnace, and pickled in a bath of dilute sulphuric acid to remove the oxidized scale from the surface. The stnps so cleaned are next rolled between steel rollers till they are reduced to ribbons the thickness of the pens to be made. At this stage the raw material is ready for the series of manufacturing operations, most of which are performed with the aid of hand fly-presses, moving suitable cutting, stamping, and embossing attachments. The pen blanks are first cut out of the ribbon so as to leave as little scrap as possible. These blanks are next pierced, that is, the central perforation and the side or shoulder slits by which flexibility is secured are made at one operation... After again annealing, they are marked and embossed with maker*s name, trade-mark, or any of the endless variety of marks by which pens are distinguished from each other. Up to this point the blanks are flat; they are now raised or rounded into the semi-cylindrical form in which pens are used. At this stage the pens are tempered by heating in iron boxes in a muffle, plunging in oil, and heating over a fire in a rotating cylindrical vessel till their surfaces attain the dull blue colour characteristic of spring steel elasticity. They are then scoured and polished by being revolved in large tin cylinders, in which they are mixed with sand, pounded crucibles, or such substances. The grinding of the points next follows, an operation performed by small rapidly-revolving emery-wheels, on which the points are first ground lengthwise and then across the nib, the object of the process being to increase the elasticity of the point. The slitting process which follows—that is, the cutting of the pen-slit from the perforation to the point—is effected with a chisel-cutter worked by a hand screwpress. On the precision with which the slit divides the point depends the perfection of the pen, to finish which it now only remains to colour the surface in a revolving cylinder over a charcoal fire, and to varnish it in a solution of shellac.

Birmingham, which was the first home of the steel-pen industry, continues to be its principal centre, but steel pens are also made in the United States and in France and Germany.

The Christian theory of penance ultimately rests on the view that the Christian church is the precise analogue of the Jewish people under the elder dispensation. As the Jews were the one family on earth in direct covenant with God, so that it became necessary for all Gentiles who desired to be brought into the like relation to abandon their own proper nationality and to become Jews by adoption, forsaking their former habits and associations together with their creed; and as various offences against the law of Moses were punished with temporary or final exclusion from fellowship in the Hebrew polity; so was it from a very early period in the Christian church. One marked difference between the Rabbinical and the Christian discipline is indeed visible from the first, that the former involved the suspension or deprivation of civil rights, whereas the latter, in all the earlier centuries at any rate, was a purely spiritual penalty. But they are agreed in combining two ideas, one wholly foreign (as already observed) to paganism, and the other but vaguely shadowed therein, —the aim of healing the offender himself and the need of his making public satisfaction to the society whose rules he had broken, and which might suffer in reputation and influence by reason of his misconduct. It is this notion of satisfaction which has led to the extension of the word “penance” itself from its more restricted and legal meaning to its wider use as covering the whole range of ascetic practices. And, as it soon came to be accepted that the inward sorrow for sin would be attended with an outward token of that sorrow, involving pain or humiliation in some form or other, there are four distinct stages in the ecclesiastical use of the word “poenitentia,”—first, as denoting the change of mind due to sorrow for sin; next, the external penalty attached to each offence; thirdly, the discipline of the church in dealing with all spiritual offences; and lastly, any piece of austerity practised with a religious motive; and the fact of the Latin language having no doublets like the English “penitence” and “penance” to express the distinct though allied ideas of the mental attitude and the outward action has powerfully conditioned Latin theology and practice.

There is naturally but little to be found in the New Testament on the subject of discipline; but the whole principle is provided for and anticipated in one saying of

Christ—that which directs that he who neglects to hear the church as arbiter in a dispute shall be regarded as a heathen man and a publican, and which goes on to confer upon the apostles the power of binding and loosing (Matt, xviii. 17, 18),—words which they, with their Jewish experience and associations, must needs have interpreted as authorizing, and even enjoining, the infliction of penalties, and notably that of excommunication, upon members of the new society. Accordingly, the leading example of such discipline, the case of the incestuous Corinthian, attests plainly some form of trial, a sentence of excommunication, some proof of repentance, and the consequent reconciliation and restoration of the offender (1 Cor. v.; 2 Cor. ii. 6-10); and it is most probable that some such method was pursued in the sub-apostolic church, each case being dealt with locally, and on its separate merits, long before any formal system or code came into existence. The penalties seem at first to have been very simple and lenient, leaving out of account the difficult problem of the phrase “delivering to Satan,” twice found in this connexion (1 Cor. v. 5; 1 Tim. i. 20), which may mean merely relegating to heathen fellowship by exclusion from the society of Christians, but also may cover much more ground. Exclusion from the eucharist itself, exclusion from non-communicating attendance at the eucharist, and exclusion from all religious assemblies for even the minor offices of worship are the only censures discoverable in the earlier period, though it is not long before certain additional penalties accompanying these grades of separation begin to appear. The following broad rules govern all cases of penitential discipline in the ancient church. (1) Penance related only to baptized and communicant Christians. Even catechumens were not held capable of it, to say nothing of Jews or Pagans. (2) It was exclusively spiritual, and in no way touched the civil condition of the penitent, even after the conversion of the empire. (3) It was not compulsory, but spontaneous; nay, so far was it from being imposed, that it had to be sought as a favour. Of course, where it was not so sought the excommunication of the offender remained in force, but this excommunication was not regarded as in itself a penance in the later use of that term. (4) The most usual rule allowed of penance but once. The relapsing offender had no second opportunity granted him. (5) It was always preceded by confession (εξορολόγησις), a term which, however, even as early as Tertullian’s time, was already extended to include, over and above the oral acknowledgment of guilt, the external acts of mortification accompanying it (De Poen., c. 9). (6) There was a careful classification of the offences involving penance, and after a time a corresponding classification of penitents into certain fixed grades, through which it was in many cases necessary to pass, from the lowest to the highest, before receiving absolution and being restored to full communion.

The case dealt with by St Paul establishes one point, that of the comparative brevity of the time of penance, even for very grave offences, since three years is the longest period which can have elapsed between the two epistles to the Corinthians; whereas under the later system periods of fifteen and twenty years are not rarely to be found, and in some cases penance was for life, however protracted. The earlier method can be shown to have come into wide acceptance far within the 2d century, because it forms the subject of a charge made against the church by Tertullian in one of his Montanist treatises (De Pudicitia) ; and the more stringent discipline of the succeeding era appears to be due to the nearly simultaneous action of two causes,—the great success which attended the persecution set on foot by the emperor Decius in 249, resulting as it did in a far larger proportion of apostasies and compromises than any of the others, and the rise of Novatianism within two years, in protest against the leniency exercised towards the lapsed. Although the church rejected the extreme theories of rigid discipline which Novatian formulated, yet it was tacitly admitted that he did but exaggerate a truth, and the reins began to be drawn tighter from that time forward. Much information regarding the practical working of the system in the third century can be gathered from the epistles of Cyprian, and from his treatise On the Lapsed ; but the fact that he had to struggle against a lax party in Africa, at the very time when laxity was preponderant in the Italian Church, proves that no uniform system had yet been evolved. The 4th century is the period when broad general rules, intended to apply to all cases, begin to be laid down, and when the distribution of penitents into fixed classes or grades is clearly evident. The Eastern Church took the lead in this development, and canons of Ancyra and Neo-Caesarea in 314 refer to the grades of penance in terms which imply their general recognition as already established. They are first defined in an epistle ascribed to Gregory Thaumaturgus about the year 258, and are as under: (1) Weepers, forbidden to. enter a church, and permitted merely to assemble at the doors to ask the prayers of those entering; (2) Hearers, suffered to come in for the Scripture lessons and the minor offices, but obliged to depart before the eucharistie office began; (3) Kneelers, allowed to attend the earlier part of the eucharistie office, as far as the close of the introductory portion, but obliged to withdraw then along with the catechumens; (4) Standers, who might remain throughout the entire rite, but were not suffered to communicate. This minute subdivision does not seem to have made good a footing in Western Christendom, where the first of these degrees is not found on record (Morinus, De Poeηiteηt., vi. 8), nor did it hold its ground very long in the East itself, disappearing as it does during the 5th century. The penitential observances usually imposed on those who were admitted to these grades were public confession of their offence in presence of the congregation, and that, in the case of the lowest grade, several times over; the disuse of all ornaments, and the assumption of a sackcloth garb, with the strewing of ashes on the head (Euseb., II. E., v. 28); men had to cut off their hair and shave their beards; women to wear their hair dishevelled and to adopt a special veil; all had to abstain from baths, festivals, and, generally speaking, all physical enjoyments, and fasting on bread and water was often enjoined; they were bound to much more frequent and regular attendance at all religious assemblies than the faithful or the catechumens (Cone. Carthag. IV., c. 81); if possessed of means, they were required to give largely in alms, or to assist actively in works of charity; and they were, for the first ten centuries, incapable of being admitted to ordination. One result of the crowds of penitents which had to be dealt with after the lull that followed the Decian persecution was that the bishops were no longer sufficient in numbers to deal with each case separately, though under the earlier system the bishop alone (even when the presbyters acted as his assessors) could put to penance, as he continued for a long time to be the only officer who could reconcile and readmit those who had performed their appointed penance. A practice arose, therefore, of appointing certain presbyters to confer with all persons applying for admission to penance, and to receive their confessions privately, in order to prepare them for the public confession which made an integral part of penance, and indeed to decide whether they could be admitted thereto at all. These officers, known as “penitentiaries,” were abolished in the church of Constantinople by the patriarch Nectarius about 390 (Socrat., II. E., v. 19; Sozom., II. E., vii. 16), and his example was followed throughout nearly the whole East; but the office continued in the West, with various modifications necessitated by the gradual change of discipline.

The main difference between the earlier and later systems lies in the fact that penance was for some centuries restricted to certain very grave sins, to wit, idolatry, adultery, and murder, with such lesser offences as were closely allied (as, for instance, the delivery of the sacred books to pagan inquisitors, that traditio which has given the words “treason” and “traitor” to modern diction); nor does it appear that any distinction was made between the treatment of those penitents whose guilt was notorious and those whose own voluntary confession alone made it manifest. Minor offences were punished with suspension of communion and with refusal of oblations at the hands of the offender, and many were left wholly to the individual conscience. But the catalogue of canonical offences was much enlarged at the time when the penitential system was developed and codified,—theft, usury, false witness, polygamy, habitual drunkenness, and some others being included amongst those which had to be publicly expiated. Yet it was this increased severity which led to the almost total abrogation of public penance, because of the scandal given by the publication of the numerous offences on the new list, whereas the cases under the older rule were necessarily few, however serious. It is clearly stated by both Socrates and Sozomen that the motive of Nectarius in abolishing the office of penitentiary was to avoid the recurrence of an uproar occasioned by the public confession of a lady of high rank, implicating others in a disgraceful fashion, so that he judged it better to leave the question of communion to be settled in private by penitents with their religious advisers, and not to be made matter of general publicity. This became the rule at once in the East, but public penance held its place in the West for many centuries longer, and in fact has never become entirely obsolete. There was, however, a considerable innovation introduced after the 7th century, in that offences privately committed were put in a different category from public sins, and were no longer made liable to public penance, but might be, and soon were, dealt with by private confession and penance only. Not only so, but, whereas the accusation of any person to the bishop as an offender was the usual mode of bringing his case under ecclesiastical cognizance in the earlier Christian centuries, on the other hand the discipline introduced in the Middle Ages was to exact public penance from such alone as had been convicted on trial before secular judges. The first beginnings of this innovation on Western usage are attributed by Morinus with much probability to Theodore of Tarsus, the Greek archbishop of Canterbury, who sat from 668 to 690, and whose Penitential (or code of ecclesiastical discipline), though not the earliest even now extant in the British Isles, soon achieved wide acceptance throughout the West, notwithstanding that it followed the then long-established Eastern usage in favour of private as opposed to public confession. A more serious innovation, fraught with dangerous consequences, made its appearance somewhat later, that of buying off a penance by a money payment to be expended in alms, a system in full force in the 9th century, as attested by the capitularies of Hincmar of Rheims and Hérard of Tours. Another custom which tended to break down the efficiency of the earlier discipline was that of resorting to Rome to have the more serious cases adjudicated on by the pope. At first this was an exceptional mode of dealing with difficult matters, regarded as too serious or too intricate for local decision, but by the 11th century it had become a fashion, so that offenders of any rank or wealth refused habitually to submit to penance at the hands of the local authorities, and betook themselves to Rome, where they stated their case in their own way, with no evidence to check them, so that they were enabled either to evade the canonical penances altogether or to get them much lightened. This abuse was combated by various councils, notably that of Seligenstadt in 1022, which decreed in its eighteenth canon “that no indulgences obtained from the Roman pontiff should avail for penitents, unless they had first fulfilled the penances set them by their own priests according to the degree of their offence; and, if they chose to go then to Rome, they must procure a permit from their own bishop, and letters on the matter in question to be carried to the pope.” But this attempt to check the practice was unsuccessful, and it became established that, just as certain cases of conscience were reserved to the bishop, and could not be dealt with by ordinary parish priests, so certain other cases were withdrawn from the cognizance of the bishops themselves, and reserved for the hearing and decision of the pope alone. Many alterations in the nature and incidence of penances were made in the course of the later Middle Ages, but the details are unimportant except for specialists; it will suffice to mention such examples as imprisonment in monasteries, penitential pilgrimages, and flagellations, the last having been introduced by the hermit Dominic the Cuirassier (died 1060).

It is time to speak of the position occupied by penance in the theological systems of the Latin and Greek Churches. Both of them account penance, taken in its widest sense of the method of dealing spiritually with sins by confession, discipline, and absolution, as a sacrament, but there are various differences in their theories and methods. The Greek and Armenian Churches are in full agreement with the Latin Church in regarding confession as an integral and essential part of penance, of which they consider it the outward and visible sign, while the spiritual part of the sacrament consists in the form of absolution, whether precatory or declaratory, pronounced by the priest. And they lay down that the external acts of asceticism performed by the penitent...

They had no individual names, but were always known under the general designation, Penates. Closely associated with the Penates were the Lares, another species of domestic deity, who seem to have been the deified spirits of deceased ancestors (see Lares). But while each family had two Penates it had but one Lar. In the household shrine the image of the Lar (dressed in a toga) was placed between the two images of the Penates, which were represented as dancing and elevating a drinking-horn in token of joy and plenty. The three images together were sometimes called Penates, sometimes Lares, and either name was used metaphorically for “home.” The shrine stood originally in the •atrium, but when the hearth and the kitchen were separated from the atrium and removed to the back of the house, and meals were taken in an upper story, the position of the shrine was also shifted. In the houses at Pompeii it is sometimes in the kitchen, sometimes in the rooms. In the later empire it was placed behind the house-door, and a taper or lamp was kept burning before it. But the worship in the interior of the house was also kept up even into Christian times; it was forbidden by an ordinance of Theodosius (392 a.d.). The old Roman used, in company with his children and slaves, to offer a morning sacrifice and prayer to his household gods. Before meals the blessing of the gods was asked, and after the meal, but before dessert, there was a short silence, and a portion of food was placed on the hearth and burned. If the hearth and the images were not in the eating-room, either the images were brought and put on the table, or before the shrine was placed a table on which were set a salt-cellar, food, and a burning lamp. Three days in the month, viz., the Calends, Nones, and Ides (i.e., the first, the fifth or seventh, and the thirteenth or fifteenth), were set apart for special family worship, as were also the Caristia (2 2d February) and the Saturnalia in December. On these days as well as on such occasions as birthdays, marriages, and safe returns from journeys, the images were crowned and offerings made to them of cakes, honey, wine, incense, and sometimes a pig. As each family had its own Penates, so the state, as a collection of families, had its public Penates. Intermediate between the worship of the public and private Penates were probably the rites (sacra) observed by each clan (gens) or collection of families supposed to be descended from a common ancestor. The other towns of Latium had their public Penates as well as Rome. The sanctuary of the whole Latin league was at Lavinium. To these Penates at Lavinium the Roman priests brought yearly offerings, and the Roman consuls, praetors, and dictators sacrificed both when they entered on and when they laid down their office. To them, too, the generals sacrificed before departing for their provinces. Alba Longa, the real mother-city of Latium, had also its ancient Penates, and the Romans maintained the worship on the Alban Mount long after the destruction of Alba Longa. The Penates had a temple of their own at Rome. It was on the Velia near the Forum, and has by some been identified with the round vestibule of the church of SS. Cosma e Damiano. In this and many other temples the Penates were rèpresented by two images of youths seated holding spears. The Penates were also worshipped in the neighbouring temple of Vesta. To distinguish the two worships, it has been supposed that the Penates in the former temple were those of Latium, while those in the temple of Vesta were the Penates proper of Rome. Certainly the worship of the Penates, whose altar was the hearth and to whom the kitchen was sacred, was closely connected with that of Vesta, goddess of the domestic hearth.

The origin and nature of the Penates was a subject of much discussion to the Romans themselves. They were traced to the mysterious worship of Samothrace: Dardanus, it was said, took the Penates from Samothrace to Troy, and after the destruction of Troy Aeneas brought them to Italy and established them at Lavinium. From Lavinium Ascanius carried the worship to Alba Longa, and from Alba Longa it was brought to Rome. Equally unsatisfactory with this attempt to connect Roman religion with Greek legend are the vague and mystic speculations in which the later Romans indulged respecting the nature of the Penates. Some said they were the great gods to whom we owe breath, body, and reason, viz., Jupiter representing the middle ether, Juno the lowest air and the earth, and Minerva the highest ether, to whom some added Mercury as the god of speech (Servius, on Aen., ii. 296; Macrobius, Sat., iii. 4, 8; Arnobius, Λdv. Nat., iii. 40). Others identified them with Apollo and Neptune (Macrob., iii. 4, 6; Arnob., l.c.; Serv., on Aen., iii. 119). The Etruscans held the Penates to be Ceres, Pales, and Fortuna, to whom others added Genius Jovialis (Serv., on Aen., ii. 325; Arnob., l.cj). The late writer Martianus Capella records the view that heaven was divided into sixteen regions, in the first of which were placed the Penates along with Jupiter, the Lares, Ac. More fruitful than these misty speculations is the suggestion, made by the ancients themselves, that the worship of these family gods sprang from the ancient Roman custom (common to many savage tribes) of burying the dead in the house. But this would account for the worship of the Lares rather than of the Penates. A comparison with other primitive religious beliefs suggests the conjecture that the Penates may be a remnant of that fetishism or animism (i.e., the attribution of life, thought, and feeling to all objects animate and inanimate) in which many savage tribes exist to this day, and through which the higher races have probably passed at some period of their history, whether we suppose animism to be the primitive state of the human mind, or to be itself a development from the worship of ancestors, as Mr Herbert Spencer believes, or from some lower form of belief. The Roman genii seem certainly to have been fetishes, and the Penates were perhaps originally a species of genii. Thus the Penates, as simple gods of food, are probably much more ancient than deities like Jupiter, Neptune, Apollo, and Minerva, whose wide and varied attributes represent a power of abstraction and generalization in the minds of their worshippers such as is not possessed by very primitive men. With the Penates we may compare the kindly household gods of old Germany; they too had their home on the kitchen hearth and received offerings of food and clothing. In the castle of Hudemühlen (Hanover) there was a kobold for whom a cover was always set on the table. In Lapland each house had one or more spirits. The souls of the dead are regarded as house-spirits by the Russians; they are represented as dwarfs, and are served with food and drink. Each house in Servia has its patron-saint. In the mountains of Mysore every house has its bhuta or guardian deity, to whom prayer and sacrifices are offered. The Chinese god of the kitchen presents some curious analogies to the Penates: incense and candles are burnt before him on the first and fifteenth of the month; some families burn incense and candles before him daily; and on great festivals, one of which is at the winter solstice (nearly corresponding to the Saturnalia), he is served with cakes, pork, wine, incense, Ac., which are placed on a table before him.

See Hartung, Die Religion der Römer ; Hertzberg, De diis Roman, pair. ; Preller, Röm. Mythol. ; Marquardt, Röm. Staats-νerwalt., vol. iii. For household gods of other peoples see Bastian, Der Mensch in der Geschichte, iii. p. 202 sq. (J. G. FR. )